You don’t know do you? You can only guess, right? Don’t feel bad. All we knew about our boot times was that they were too slow. Hey! We’re working on that. Anyway, wouldn’t you like to know what your exact boot time from start to desktop really is? Would you like to know if your computer is a hare or a turtle or maybe it’s worse than a turtle – maybe it’s almost vegetative?
It might not be the most important thing to know, but if your boot times are sluggish and you know it, then you can take steps to correct it. Like not using bloated anti-virus or security suites like McAfee and Norton. Or maybe cleaning out some of those programs that start with Windows that don’t need to be there (WinPatrol -free- is an excellent tool for this). Or maybe it’s time you started uninstalling some of those programs you’ve installed that you never use – yeah, you know who you are! Or what about running a registry scan and removing the 150,000+ orphaned registry entries that have accumulated over the years. You do realize that Windows has to load all those useless entries every single time you boot. Registry Commander makes it a snap to keep your registry free of orphaned entries and other clutter. And, do you really need 5000 fonts on your system? Clean out some of the fonts you thought you’d use but never do. CAUTION – Only remove the fonts you’ve added yourself, NEVER remove any Windows system fonts – or you could be in for a very big and frustrating surprise. Do not remove any of the fonts that were installed by Windows. If you do you could cripple your system – or see your start menu and other menu’s in Swahili.
OK, back to the topic at hand. How fast does your computer boot? We’re glad we asked that question, because we have the answer. Now, after all this time, you’ll be able to time your boot and see exactly how long it takes for you to boot up from start to desktop.
Download a freeware program called BootRacer (1.9MB Windows zip file). BootRacer works on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, both 32bit and 64 bit versions.
Here’s the author’s description:
- Easy installation and use.
- Automatically calculates your Windows boot time.
- BootRacer uses minimum of computer resources.
- Runs under the non-administrator accounts.
- BootRacer logs all the results to the history report and to standard event log. You can check events using Windows Event Viewer.
- BootRacer is free for non-commercial use.